A Game of You

A Game of You

Ontroerend Goed at The Garage, Norwich

Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2011

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 7th May 2011

The fringe festival got off to a dark, strange but fascinating start.

Audience members are led in singly, through tiny curtained rooms, one mirrored. You know you’ll participate and it’s going to be disturbing; you don’t know how.

It’s immersive theatre, relying on clever psychology, vanity, wariness and our self-consciousness. Like a 1960s Happening which at extremes catered for an audience of one, this is about you, quite literally. You are engaged in warm conversation with a stranger.

You are shown a film clip of an audience member you may have noticed outside, but don’t know. You are persuaded to play drama director, creating an imaginary life for that person. The friendly, beguiling stranger encourages you to make up things about this person from your inner mind.

Without giving too much away, you are being filmed at one point. Only after a time do you realise it is being shown to another in the moving audience who is being encouraged to invent a life for you!

At the end, you watch your befriender introducing himself to the newest audience member, pretending to be you, based on observing you. Be careful what you say. But you’ll be drawn in, either way.